Accounting Guru

Accounting and bookkeeping are two of the most essential business functions for any hotel business. Even the smallest mistake can drastically impact your bottom line. While no accounting will ever be 100% error-free, taking precautions to avoid critical errors is crucial to your hotel’s growth.

At MyHotelAccountants, we understand that it’s a lot easier (and more cost-efficient) to prevent financial mistakes than it is to correct them down the line. We’ve compiled a list of mistakes that can be easily avoided, allowing you to manage your hotel more effectively.

Mistake #1: Not Accounting for Unforeseen Events

If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that natural disasters, pandemic, and other business-alternating scenarios can be entirely unforeseen. As a business owner or manager, you need to be build up enough excess cash that will allow you to operate your business or hold you over through events such as:

• Natural disasters, including hurricanes, tornados, and earthquakes
• Sudden death of a key member of the business
• Worldwide pandemics, like Covid-19, that impact the number of people traveling
• Unexpected increase in the number of employees resigning at once

If your hotel is unprepared to operate through tough times, the stability of the business can be greatly compromised.

Mistake #2: Neglecting Accounting Responsibilities

Although accounting and bookkeeping can be relatively mundane to some, it’s an absolutely essential part of running a successful business. If you don’t probably track the money coming in and going out, you’re blindly leading your hotel into the ground because you don’t understand the health of your business.

Are all transactions within the walls of the hotel being accounted for? With a hotel, there are multiple elements that impact the finances of the business and need to be accounted for in your bookkeeping on a regular basis. Make sure you’re keeping a record of categories like room rates and occupancy, food and beverage inventory, store merchandise, staff salaries and paid time off, and more. Neglecting even one portion of the business will provide you with a cloudy understanding of your finances—which can lead to poor buying decisions or missed opportunities.

Mistake #3: Lack of Communication Across Teams

Your bookkeeper likely isn’t involved in every aspect of the hotel’s day to day. However, if they’re not kept in the loop, it will likely lead to incorrect data in your reporting. Whether you appoint your bookkeeper with one point of contact at the hotel who oversees all facets of the business, or you provide them with multiple contacts, they need to have a high-level understanding of every aspect that is reflected within your financial statements.

Mistake #4: Not Setting (or Following) a Budget

Every dollar counts. You should never spend more than you have coming into your hotel. While this principle seems relatively straightforward, it’s all easier said than done. Putting a budget in place is an effective way for you to monitor each department’s spending. Not only does it help you understand the health of your business, but it allows the managers of each department to understand any financial limitations better and see how their income and expenses directly impact the hotel’s growth objectives.

Mistake #5: Not Backing Up Your Data

Technology isn’t foolproof. If proper steps aren’t taken on the frontend, your financial information can be compromised or lost due to unforeseen circumstances. It’s also essential you have access to previous versions in case the data is incorrect and needs to be checked for errors. To ensure you have access to your financial records in any scenario, back-ups are non-negotiable. While backups won’t always save the day, there are many instances where they’ll help you avoid a major headache!

Mistake #6: Allowing Errors Within the Data

Data entry can’t be imprecise. You can’t base the health of your hotel off of approximates or guesses—that does you as the business owner no good! When bookkeeping, all precautions must be in place to ensure everything is being recorded accurately. If you’re not tracking everything or are tracking everything imprecisely, you’re left with records that can cause more harm than good. Take the time to ensure everything you’re filling out is as accurate as possible, and review your work periodically to correct as needed.

Mistake #7: Not Delegating When Needed

As a business owner, your time is valuable. You’re often being pulled in many different directions, making it hard to spend adequate time in every aspect of the business. With so much on your plate, you need to know when it’s time to delegate your bookkeeping to someone else. Outsourcing the tedious bookkeeping to professional accountants will ensure everything is recorded (and recorded correctly!), providing you with more time to focus on the growth and success of your hotel.

Have peace of mind knowing your financial records are both accurate and reliable, allowing you to make more informed decisions about your hotel. Outsource your bookkeeping to our team of accountants that specialize in hotels at MyHotelAccountants.

COVID-19 has affected nearly every industry—and the hotel industry has taken one of the hardest hits. With fewer people traveling for both personal and business, hotels likely won’t see the traffic they’re accustomed to until 2023 at the earliest. This means that monitoring your hotel expenses is more critical than ever. Finding ways to reduce your largest operating costs can be the difference between staying in business and closing your doors.

Let’s discuss a few ways you can proactively reduce your hotel’s operating costs and ensure operation in a post-COVID-19 era.

Adjust the Staff Schedule to Align with Business Volume

Avoid creating fixed schedules for the hotel’s hourly employees. Having set hours in place for each employee can result in either overstaffing or understaffing, both of which can be detrimental to the satisfaction of your customers. Not to mention that overstaffing is unintentionally throwing hotel profits down the drain!

Use a forecast model to understand the ebbs and flows within your hotel’s occupancy levels. Are there specific weekends that are always busy? Are there specific month’s where fewer guests are staying there? Consider all of these factors—and then consider the reduced travel for COVID-19. Were any of these busy weekends impacted by music festivals or conferences that are no longer happening this year? Understanding how many guests will check-in at your hotel will allow you to staff adequately (and find areas where hours can be reduced to cut costs).

With fewer guests checking in, you can reduce the number of staff manning the front desk. You might also opt to install self check-in kiosks, which can significantly reduce the labor costs associated with these roles. If fewer rooms are booked, you might reduce the number of cleaning staff on the schedule each day. If your hotel has a restaurant or bar that is operating at 50% capacity, you likely can have fewer staff members waiting on those guests.

Keep in mind that reducing your staffs’ hours can cause dissatisfaction. Ensure you explain the reasoning behind the schedule changes and an estimated timeframe of when they’ll see their hours increase again.

Cross-Train Your Hotel Staff

Training is an important part of having well-equipped and efficient staff. Throughout their onboarding process, you equipped them with the tools and resources needed to perform their role well—but did you enable them to help out with anything apart from their day-to-day responsibilities? It’s a cost-effective idea to equip your staff with the skills to perform multiple jobs throughout the hotel, allowing them to step in as needed. This will enable you to use the team you already have in a role temporarily while (or instead of) searching for a permanent solution. It also makes your staff more well-rounded, helping them out in the hospitality industry longterm.

Invest in “Green” Enhancements

Using eco-friendly practices throughout your hotel can significantly reduce your operating costs. Consider investing in the following:

• LED Lighting – Did you know that LED bulbs use at least 75% less energy and last 25 times longer than incandescent bulbs? Making this switch will save energy, and as a result, will reduce your hotel’s electricity bill. Whether you swap the common spaces, lobby, hallways, or guest rooms, eventually switching out all incandescent bulbs will make a noticeable difference to your monthly operating costs.
• ENERGY STAR® – From your hotel’s commercial HVAC system to the coffee makers in guest rooms, making the switch to ENERGY STAR appliances will reduce the amount of energy being used each month. Keep in mind that the more appliances you switch, the larger your savings will be.
• Smart Windows – While the upfront costs will be a bit costly, in the longterm smart windows are one of the best investments you can make to reduce your electric bills. Smart windows work by automatically adjusting their tint throughout the day, controlling how much light passes through them. This allows guests to maintain a warmer or cooler room without even touching the thermostat.
• Towels – According to the American Hotel and Lodging Association, requesting that guests reuse their towels for more than one use reduces loads of laundry by 17% (directly impacting your water, sewer, energy, and labor costs!). Placing small signs in guest bathrooms requesting they reuse towels is a small step you can take for significant change.

At MyHotelAccountants, we’ve successfully helped many hotels throughout the United States find ways to increase hotel value and profits. If your hotel needs assistance navigating these uncertain times, contact MyHotelAccounts for a consultation.

If you could learn at the feet of one of the most respected hotel pioneers in the world, what would you discover? Find out what this hotel icon has to teach about leadership.

When you think of the Ritz-Carlton, certain thoughts pop into your head.

Maybe you imagine the hotel’s opulent environment that is designed to woo the senses. Or you think about the hotel’s renowned customer service and royal treatment.

The latter isn’t a coincidence. And it was all because of Horst Schulze’s vision for a hotel.

Schulze knew from an early age that he wanted to become a hotelier, despite never having been inside a hotel before. His family’s small German village also had no hotel to speak of, yet young Schulze was adamant.

His parents wanted to support his dream, but the nearest hotel was 60 miles away from the village. So, they reached out to a government program and got him a job as a busboy at a luxury hotel.

He left home at the tender age of 14 to go to boarding school and start working in the hotel industry. This humble beginning was only the start of his meteoric rise to stardom.

Schulze soon worked at the finest hotels in Europe, and later the United States. He worked his way up the chain each time and became in high demand in the industry. So much so that when a group of investors called him to start a new hotel company, he only had one thing to say:

“If you are willing to go top market, I would be interested, but I’m only interested [in] top market.”

He had the vision to combine the refinement of European hotels with the relaxed atmosphere of the United States. And he managed to create just that, and a lot more.

Nowadays, Schulze’s Ritz-Carlton is the gold standard of service in the hotel industry. Hoteliers around the world applaud his efforts and try to emulate his techniques.

So, if you need leadership tips, there’s no better person to learn from than this icon of the hotel industry.

The Tips

How do you become a gold standard in the industry?

Delve into the mind of the co-founder and founding president of the Ritz-Carlton company and find out.

Tip #1 – Set Your Three Universals

Schulze believes that there are three principles to live by, and that these traverse industries.

The first principle is to make sure that your product or service is defect-free. Your creation should work perfectly to eliminate any potential problems in the future.

Next, Schulze believes that everything should happen in a timely manner. Time is money and, in the case of hotel guests, immense frustration. Ensure that your guests see that you respect their time and don’t make them wait for something.

Lastly, remember that customers are people, too.

Schulze believes that they want and deserve respect. That means you should resist the urge to dehumanize them and turn them into transactions.

Instead, take the time to individualize and personalize their experience. When you focus on that, you automatically deliver outstanding services.

Tip #2 – Don’t Allow Anything to Cloud Your Vision

It’s easy to lose sight of your vision when you’re in the thick of things. But Schulze maintains that a company’s growth and complexity shouldn’t lead to clouded vision.

As a company evolves, it’s easy to lose sight of what you wanted to achieve in the first place. Remember that rules and regulations are a necessary evil. But you need to focus beyond that to achieve the growth and creativity needed to see your vision to fruition.

Tip #3 – Empower Your Employees

From the start, Schulze believed that empowering employees also empowered the organization. And he would know. After all, he started as a dishwasher at his first hotel job and worked other “lower” positions throughout his storied career.

In all his experience, he came across this simple truth:

People want to be a part of something greater. They want to have a purpose.

When working with your employees, remember that alignment with the company’s objectives is important. You want them to invest themselves in the vision and take ownership of it.

Schulze encourages employees to take the hotel’s vision as their own and be a part of that dream during orientations. And he does this for a very specific reason:

If they can grow and take ownership of customer satisfaction, they are more invested in the customer experience.

Tip #4 – Customer Service Always Wins

Schulze takes a holistic approach when designing customer service protocols. He understands that money does make big corporations applaud. But it’s the actual service that gets them to that point.

So, approach customer service with the individual in mind.

Everybody wants to be the most important person in the room, so he always strives to make them feel that way. And to do so, he studied the market to find out what customers really wanted.

When you focus on delivering the best customer service experience, the money will be coming to you. But if you choose to compromise for the sake of money, he says that the competition will eventually win.

Become the Gold Standard

How do you recreate the same success that the Ritz-Carlton achieved?

Take the time to focus on the experience and image of your hotel.

Each guest that walks through your doors wants a special experience. And each employee that applies for a job wants to be a part of a dream. Both are achievable only if you empower your employees to take part in that special customer service experience.

When you invest time in your employees, they, in turn, invest energy into the guests. As a result, guests leave your hotel feeling like the most important person in the world.

If you’re looking for ways to transform your hotel, who better to learn from than the man who wrote the gold standard?

Horst Schulze can attest that if you compromise for money, the competitor will win sooner or later. But if you focus on the customer service experience, it wins every time.

Are you ready for more transformative tips for your hotel?

Download this ebook for more industry secrets from some of the best hoteliers in history.

Good hospitality is ALL about the guests’ experience. Check out these examples of the smartest ways that hotels are using tech to change how guests interact with the environment.

Starwood Hotels is leading the charge in changing the way guests see their environmental impact. And they’re doing it without sacrificing the comfort that guests are familiar with.

The hotels feature counters that show guests how much electricity they’re using. It also gives them the choice to turn down the lights to help reduce energy consumption.

These wall-mounted counters are just a start. Hotels are doing it all with top-of-the-line technology.

So, are you keeping up with tech innovations as much as you should?

Here’s how other tech advances can pave the way for better customer experiences at your hotel.

#1 – Digital Locks

There’s nothing wrong with old-fashioned locks and keys. Some may even argue that there’s something decidedly retro about using a key to open a room. And did you know that keycards can also elicit the same sense of nostalgia?

However, if you want to truly improve guest experience, it may be time for an upgrade.

The newest trend is to let guests use their smartphones to unlock their hotel room’s door. In a world where you use your phone for everything, it just makes sense to integrate that into the hotel experience. It also helps to get them used to swiping their smartphone – it’s a habit you want them in when they visit the hotel bar later on.

Smartphone room entry isn’t a new thing, though. Starwood, as well as other big brand hotels like Hilton, already incorporate this type of tech into their hotels.

If you want to keep up with the competition, you may want to consider using it as well.

#2 – Mobile Check-In

The check-in process becomes an arduous task sometimes. And just about the last thing a guest wants to do is wait in a long line after an already long flight.

Fortunately for these guests, going to the reception desk to check in is becoming a thing of the past. Some hotels are leading the charge to use mobile tech to get their guests checked in. It makes it a much smoother process, avoids long queues, and decreases any guest anxiety.

So, if you’re looking to get ahead in the industry, you may want to consider adopting it for your hotels together with digital locks.

#3 – NFC Technology

NFC, or near field communication technology, is another way of elevating the guest experience at your hotel. It’s a short-range, high-frequency way for two devices to transfer data wirelessly.

And you can leverage it in a variety of ways.

The NFC way of taking payments is secure and nearly instantaneous, with more and more people using it. Remember the hotel bar I mentioned earlier? The simple habit or swiping a phone (which is almost always on the counter) makes ordering more drinks the most natural thing in the world, which is great for increasing your average revenue per guest. It saves guests rummaging around for credit cards, cash, or loose change. The smartphone is more readily available and it makes the transaction super smooth.

You can also use NFC for mobile check-ins and digital locks.

Beyond that, the possibilities are endless.

Imagine being able to personalize advertisements to guest demographics. Digital signs in the lobby could change to ones featuring the hotel’s kids club when a child walks by. Or women may see beauty treatment package advertisements for the hotel’s spa.

It could all happen if you choose to adopt NFC technology at your hotels.

#4 – Voice Controlled Rooms

Smart devices in the home are nothing new. Nowadays, many people have voice-controlled or smart technology helping with their day-to-day tasks.

But what about incorporating that same technology into hotel rooms?

The Wynn Hotel & Resort in Las Vegas did exactly that by installing Amazon Echo in all their rooms. Guests can ask Amazon’s Alexa for assistance in various things, like controlling the lighting, draperies, temperature, and TV.

So many people already use a voice-activated assistant to help them with tasks throughout the day. It makes sense to take that familiar technology and put it in hotel rooms, too.

#5 – Tablet Computer Technology

Remember the last time you sat down to dine at a restaurant?

Odds are that the staff there used a tablet to seat you and take your order.

Tablets started popping up in the hospitality industry years ago, and for good reason. They make it easy for guests to personalize their experience without using a go-between, or a staff member, to do it for them.

You can use tablets for everything – from guest check-ins to controlling different systems in the room. Why search for a light switch when the tablet is on-hand to help guests with the perfect lighting and temperature control?

And because of a tablet’s versatility, you can load them with different types of software that your guests may find useful. Forget those hotel restaurant menu binders and outdated television slide shows. Show every feature to your hotel’s advantage on a vivid tablet screen.

This is one technology that you really can’t afford to delay.

Most customers nowadays expect some level of digitization. Otherwise, you run the risk of looking outdated and out of touch with today’s market.

Guest Experience in a Digital Age

Leveraging technology in your hotel doesn’t necessarily mean an end to the age of traditional customer service. There is always a need for superior customer interaction in the hospitality industry.

However, you may need to re-strategize how you offer that same customer service.

Switching to mobile check-ins or digital locks doesn’t necessarily make your front desk reception obsolete. You may just need to refocus their roles in other areas. It may even free up your staff for more personalized interactions.

The same goes for NFC technology and tablets.

All of them are conveniences meant to make your guests’ stay as seamless as possible. Technology isn’t necessarily meant to replace human interaction.

Think of it as a new way of doing things.

It frees your staff from routine tasks so they have more time and energy for what’s really important – taking care of your guests.

The best advice often comes from those who walked the road before you.

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